A GERMAN DEFENCE.

Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser, Volume LXXIV, Issue 3469, 29 June 1915, Page 2

A GERMAN DEFENCE.

JUSTIFICATION FOR USE OF G&SES. London, June 27. The "Cologne Gazette," in a semiofficial defence of the use of asphyxiating gasep, says that the basic idea of the Hague agreements was the prevention of unnecessary cruelty and unnecoeesary killing when milder methods of putting out of action were possible. "It has always been per missable," says the paper, "to compel the evacuation of positions by flooding Those who were not indignant or surprised when water was used as a wea pon against us in Flanders are not entitled to be indignant when we employ air to carry stupefying gas. The Hague Convention desires to pre vent the wholesale destruction of human lives without a chance of es cape, which would only occur if poisonous gas shells were rained down on a defenceless enemy who did not see them coming, and was immediately exposed thereto. The changed forms of warfare made new methods continually necessary, and a war of science must draw conclusions from the conditions of trench warfare. The enemy's outcry is only due to bis incapacity to emulate the results achieved by German science."